


what if this storm ends?

by rabbitual



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst, Demon Aziraphale (Good Omens), Ex-Archangel Crowley (Good Omens), Fallen Angel Aziraphale (Good Omens), Genderfluid Crowley (Good Omens), Hurt/Comfort, In Fact Heavy Relaince on Paradise Lost, Literary References & Allusions, Love Confessions, M/M, Many Liberties Are Taken, More Reliance on Paradise Lost than the book version of Good Omens, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Canon, Quotations, References to Paradise Lost
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-05
Updated: 2020-01-12
Packaged: 2020-11-24 04:49:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20901899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rabbitual/pseuds/rabbitual
Summary: 'Aziraphale felt deeply that everything he had done was the right thing. He had not often felt that way before. He knew, was certain of it, that what he had wrought was part of Her Ineffable Plan. It had to be, didn't it?'"An Angel" and "a Demon" are, under scrutiny, rather subjective terms.





	1. as you are now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'What a coward you are', the reflection seemed to say to him. But he had eternity left to sort it out now - or at least until Heaven and Hell gave the apocalypse a second go. 'Angel isn’t going anywhere.'

What do you do with something that is, but that does not start for a thousand years? How can something be born with the beginning of time but not begin until hours after time was supposed to have ended? And what would you call that? Is there a word for it?

Crowley couldn’t say. But it was too that this thing had been said and done; a prophecy foretold in the same instant of its unveiling; déjà vu, a prophetic insight, whatever you wished to call It. It was a bud that sprouted in Eden, as with all else alive on this Earth, and Lord knows - surely, she must have - It was still alive and well inside of him too. He knew It like the back of his hand; had been wrestling with a word for it for almost two millennia, or whenever he’d first thought to ever give it a name, to speak it aloud.

Really, Crowley had never said much; six thousand years on Earth, the ages endured before time was invented, and still nothing ever of worth. And it had kind of been on purpose: he'd tried to minimize his own importance since his Fall, in hopes of being left alone. He shouldn’t have been surprised that he didn’t know what to call It. But it was beating so wildly in his chest - It had, inexplicably, and very much without his permission, sprouted wings and found hope to soar on - that he couldn’t help but wonder at It and what It was. Fickle things, words are.

Following the End That Wasn’t, Crowley and Aziraphale dined at the Ritz. A nightingale sang in Berkley Square. The world continued to spin about them so that lunch stretched past them into too long hours, and yet passed as fast that it soon became night, and there they still were. Of course it did - of course it did. 

And even when the pair finally did deign to depart, only badgered into it by very kind, but very tired and justly irritated servers, the angel and the demon still were not wont to part. Thus begot the slightly drunken, slightly miraculous walk across London to Aziraphale’s bookshop, and the It Crowley harbors came with them.

There was something New in the air about them. They both could sense it, Crowley could tell. Keen eyes are well trained in the art of disassembling: he saw it in the way Aziraphale now held himself with a cautious rigidity, the way his eyes fluttered around and he clasped his hands just that much harder. Perhaps it was this new Earth - yes, it must’ve been. And yet, as they settled into the cushions of a well-worn couch with an equally worn bottle of wine, it was entirely the same as it ever was. Aziraphale produced the very fine vintage from his back room and Crowley did not conceal his delight, certain he’d dried up the best of the collection eleven years ago. The angel poured into paired glasses and pushed one by the neck across the coffee table with a pinched smile, a smile that was a damn ready to burst forth.

But what Aziraphale did not notice was that the Thing had gained a new sing-song voice and was screeching sharply in Crowley’s ears, mingling with the blood rushing under his temples. It was there. Of course It was; IT always had been, hadn’t It? But now It was making itself known. But what It was?

Aziraphale was settled neatly into the chaise, still in his full faded three-piece suit and shoes, minus only the tie. The closest he’d ever gotten to drunken debauchery - at least from Crowley’s memory - was he had sunk low under his collar, like a turtle into his shell, which he was doing now, with his shoes propped up on his coffee table, which he wasn’t. He didn’t wring his fingers like he did when sober, his hands settled comfortably around his glass, as calm as the rest of him.

Crowley was a different story. By now he’d lost his jacket and shoes, his sunglasses dangling on the tip of his nose. He sat so far on the edge of his chair that he was nearly falling off it, an elbow on the arm of the chair, propping his chin in his palm, and the other dangling his empty glass over the precipice of his knee. He swayed to music that wasn’t playing, but Aziraphale was nearly humming it too.

He knew they were talking - he knew Aziraphale was talking, at least, while he was responding with less than words but no less meaning - but he cannot make out what. He knew they were in the bookshop - that it burned down, but was nevertheless still standing. He knew he was steadily heading towards wasted. He knew the angel was before him. He was there, fully corporated. Undestroyed.

He knew he was wondering, thoughts wandering far and fast, vast and thoroughly. There were peeking into every corner Crowley had ever tried to hide; from Hell, Heaven, the angel, himself. He was thinking of Things Long Forsook, as Aziraphale topped off his glass the instant it ran dry. He was feeling Things Long Spent, as he eases off his bowtie; was watching the reveal of his throat too closely.

He was memorizing parts of Aziraphale that he had never thought to look, like the crow’s feet at his temples, the nest of sapphiric eyes.

The angel said he wanted to clear his Bucket List, now that he had the chance. Crowley graciously reminded him that he cannot Kick The Bucket. Aziraphale amended that he meant all the things he wanted to do before the world ended - should it try again. The demon reminded him that they went to his number four last month - and, now that he looked at it, was his bucket list just a ranked list of his favorite restaurants? Aziraphale glared harshly at that but was spilling a laugh as recklessly as his wine. It didn’t stain his vest - with the intervention of a small, demonic miracle. The angel didn’t notice either, but that made Crowley feel all the warmer about doing it.

“Oh, Dear, you’ll come with me, won’t you?” Aziraphale asked. At first, it was rhetorical, but halfway through he leaned forward, precarious on his seat, eyes desperately searching Crowley’s. The demon grinned and pushed his sunglasses up his forehead to see him better. He missed the sound of them falling back, clattering to the floor. Instead, he watched the flicker of a fire in Aziraphale’s eyes as he talked, a light shimmering like the fresh wick of a candle. That was new too, wasn’t it?

“Ah, all eager for my company now, are we?” It was slightly self-degrading, slightly bitter; just a fleeting metallic taste on the tip of the serpent’s tongue, and it was all wrapped up and presented under the pretense of a smirk. Always a temptation; always dissembling. 

And, ever the angel, Aziraphale barreled on, either ignorant or ignoring: “Why, of course!” He raised a brow, hands fluttering around the thin stem of his glass. “What would be the point, otherwise, if you weren’t there?”

Crowley was now thinking about the End of the World that never happened, the fire he can smell that never burned, the angel that sits before him that was never destroyed. He has never told him about It. He wanted to but never spoke the language. Aziraphale did. Aziraphale knew every language - well, save French, and a handful of the rest of the lot - but he used them with grace. Crowley did not dance well with words, but Aziraphale did. Even with his tongue so thickly weighed down with wine, as it was now, he would talk finely while blubbering simultaneously. Aziraphale knew every word - and he had never said anything even akin to It in six thousand years.

Aziraphale was staring at him with his brows fretted. Like he was struggling with what he was seeing. He had gotten drunk a lot faster than Crowley - had he willed himself to? -, who regretted every inch of consciousness that still remained in him. “Can you grow affectionate of a bad feeling?” the angel asked.

Crowley stared at him, holding his wine in his mouth. His eyes slithered into thin lines, wane thinner than a crescent moon. He gulped the rest of his wine. Stared harder. “What?” he replied smartly, regretting ever more his half sobriety, and struggling greatly not to spit the words too hard.

“You.” One of Aziraphale’s hands retreated from his glass and moved to his collar. His fingers fluttered around his neck in the empty space where his shucked bowtie should’ve been. “I- er-” he coughed and turned his nose into his wine. “Suppose I must have. Because it just-” His hand fell from his throat to his chest, where he touched his sternum with two fingers. “Feels alight, now.”

Crowley decided he really did not like this conversation. “Well I haven’t gotten any better,” he said. His throat felt like it was burning like he had been drinking whiskey rather than wine, and drinking it more violently too.

“Well, what about you, dear boy?” Aziraphale drank down the rest of his glass slowly, and then put it down on the table and replaced it with the bottle itself. He folded it closely in his arms, resting it against his chest. His cheeks are pinker than the droplet stains he left on the couch that Crowley hadn’t bothered to flick away yet - that he had been waiting for the angel to notice so that he might ask Crowley to. “What do you want to do to christen the new world? There must be something you were going to miss.”

Crowley still didn’t know how to speak It. He only knew what was, and that was what this was before him: a lovely creature, a divine thing, that looked at him so wholly as if he was the world itself. That could have been a declaration - a shot still far off, but as close as Aziraphale’s words had ever been to his true feelings. What better time to tell him than now, as they celebrated the continuation of the world? He may not have known what to call It, but he’d had an inkling that it was a four-letter word.

_“I’ll give you a lift, anywhere you want to go.”_

_“We can go off together, nobody would even notice us.”_

_“Wherever you are, I’ll come to you.”_

The better question was, he thought, how many more ways can he really say It?

“What I want,” Crowley said instead, eyeing the lip of the bottle as it rested in the crook of Aziraphale’s neck, “is alcohol.”

“Quite extraordinary amounts?” Aziraphale quipped. 

Crowley’s stagnant grin stretched into a languid smile, he helpless to prevent it. “If you’d be so kind.”

Aziraphale grinned uncharitably. He wiggled further into the arm of the couch. Crowley sucked his teeth, and then stood with no little effort. He wondered at the way the edges of the bookshelves seemed fuzzy, and briefly entertained the wonder if Adam had made them more vaporous than before, the floor more aqueous than before. Aziraphale held out a hand to him, arm wavering, and Crowley balanced himself with it. He only pressed two fingertips into the palm of the angel’s hand - not a pink more. “Fine!” he said. “I’ll get it myself.”

“The better ones are in the back cupboard, dear,” Aziraphale said. “They’ll be m-much to your taste.”

Crowley waved him off over his shoulder. He tried to say, “I know where it is, Angel,” but the words don’t quite make it out entirely, but he didn’t care enough to correct it. The tipsy lilt to his saunter nearly made him walk straight, and nearly topple over. He walked with his arms outstretched, hands grazing across bookshelves and the door frame to the bookshop’s back room. In the reflection of a catty-corner window, he could see Aziraphale watching after him, cheek smothered into the back of the couch. If Aziraphale noticed his noticing, he did nothing to hide it. Crowley felt something rise in his throat.

The backroom lead into a facade of a kitchen, which was really an overly decorated wine cabinet. There were stashes of snacks, here and there, of course, but they were so processed that they could have survived Armageddon, had it actually happened. Immortal creatures didn’t tend to do well with expiration dates - or at least, his angel didn’t. That hardly counted as food, let alone turn it into a used kitchen.

It doesn’t take him long. Crowley was well acquainted with the angel’s wine cabinet. He grabbed two bottles, just for good measure, without looking at labels or dates at all. His eyes caught on his reflection in the window. Yellow eyes bore back into him from the porthole, illuminated behind by the late-night London street. 'What a coward you are', the reflection seemed to say to him. But he had eternity left to sort it out now - or at least until Heaven and Hell gave the apocalypse a second go. 'Angel isn’t going anywhere.' He tried not to glare too harshly at his reflection.

Crowley returned to the chaise quite victoriously, both bottles firm in the curl of his fists like flaming chariot torches. “Got you a gift, Angel,” he said, stumbling not-so-valiantly to the table with his spoils and crashing into the chair opposite. He looked up, and was greeted by the cushions. He took in slowly, with his still slightly swimming vision, that the empty couch stretched before him. The first bottle, also empty, rolled toward his feet and bumped against his ankle.

How do you ask someone that is gone that you never wish to part?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So yeah this basically happened because I started writing snippets of what Falling might be like for Aziraphale, and then I couldn't get the idea out of my head.
> 
> As you may have noticed in the tags, I am going to be leaning heavily on Milton's interpretation of the Fall and keeping it in mind as I go through this, but also just pulling a lot of it out of my ass. I've seen the show and just got my hands on a copy of the book, but I've been too busy reading books for my major (I bet you can guess one of them.) But I also am convinced that one of the few books Crowley has indulged in is Paradise Lost, I'm sure he picks it up whenever he feels like brooding. 
> 
> (Let alone that he can just sympathize with Satan and relive his Original Temptation, but the part where Satan and all the rebel angels turn into snakes as punishment is just too on the nose for him to NOT read it until he's sick of himself.)
> 
> I have lots scripted for this so far, but no real plans or determinations on how I'm posting chapters and when. I'm kind of just winging it. And I'm not going to even try to predict when I may have time to put the next chapter up, because my midterms are approaching and honestly my university can't decide if midterms is in the middle of the term or if it's just anywhere between the first and last weeks of the semester. Plus I've got another fic that I'm in the middle of writing, but I have no impulse control and wrote this one too.
> 
> Either way, thank you so much for reading the first bit of this fic! It's just getting started so I appreciate anyone that's paying attention while I still haven't offered very much. Come follow me @aloneontheark on Twitter if you want to chat or get more Good Omens content on your timeline.


	2. slow, like i used to

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you confess, then?” Gabriel asked. 
> 
> “Yes,” Aziraphale said, but he knew it wouldn’t matter either way.

There are many ways to look at the ideas of Heaven and Hell, as humans have come up with to understand them. Many ways to look at what is Good or Evil. Many directions from which to look for reason. And there is a “right answer,” because the Almighty has an answer for everything, and our human conceptions are just ‘guesses’. Cards on a table. But at the same time, the Almighty’s true answer is an infinite number of answers and explanations existing simultaneously, which is why humans will never be ‘right’ in their guessing. But for conversation’s sake, to understand what happened to the Principality Aziraphale, we can look at one answer.

In a way, Heaven and Hell are cyclical.

Imagine an hourglass. Imagine that both halves are infinitely wide, and can both infinitely create more sand. Imagine that the falling sand is the pouring of cast-out angels into the demonic deep, and as it falls, they disturb, in ripples, the surface of piles of demons. 

Demons, of course, have in their nature a burning desire to bring about destruction. There are many reasons for this, but mainly, it is that it is the antithesis of Angels, and the original fallen rebels, when coming up with their ‘mission statement’, suddenly found that this was the best their imaginations could come up with. But rarely does this practice work: look at the First Temptation. Afterward, the demon then called Crawly received a well-earned Commendation from Hell, and it had all the Angels in Heaven very worked up. But they were quickly assured that twisted hands make tilted work because while Adam and Eve were flung from Paradise, they were set free to bring about the rest of human history, and ultimately, Crawley allowed Her to invent Forgiveness. The creation of evil just provides space for the creation of more good.

As one of those clever humans once put it, they are a part of that force that would will ever evil, but does ever good.

But just as swift as demons do good, piety and zealotry enter the heads of seraphim and tempt the hearts of cherubim. There is no such thing as harmless power, even among Angels. If it weren’t, Lucifer would never have wanted more to fall for. It is in the nature of this system of moral polarity that the pious descend, and it is natural thus that angels would continue to Fall. They do not like to believe it is true, nor do they like to think about how She can make new angels just as easily as She creates demons. They are in infinite supply. Her created Universe is infinite, the earth infinitesimal, and She does not worry about limits, because they are not a concept to Her.

There are many directions that a finger could point when determining the causes that led to the outcome of the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, but at the same time it was just as natural as it was a fluke; it was the decay of Grace’s half-life. Fault is subjective and often detracts from the real things of importance. But there are the facts, and they played out this way:

Aziraphale sunk into the arm of the chaise, nested his chin into the crook of his elbow, as Crowley crossed the bookshop’s back room, swaying and stumbling. A part of him meant to laugh, but his mind moved too slowly now; in its place, he just smiled even wider. His cheeks were nearly hurting at this point, he’d been smiling all afternoon. But what wasn’t there to smile about? He had just saved the world from destruction. Certainly, that was worth smiling about, wasn’t it?

His eyes trailed Crowley out of the room.

Aziraphale felt deeply, down in the core of his Grace, that everything he had done was the right thing. He had not often felt that way before. He was anxious and prone to doubt long before the start of human history, or even the creation of the Earth. And the certain discerning look the other angels gave him since the beginning of time was enough to make one doubt on his own. He knew, was certain of it, that what he had wrought this time around was part of Her Ineffable Plan. It had to be, didn't it? What worth would the Ineffable Plan have if there was nothing left to act it out on?; what need would a plan have left if Heaven won, and the wake of a victory left destroyed Earth, Hell, Humanity, and Crow-

He believed he had done the right thing for the first time. It felt right. This calm wake that had settled in Adam’s new Earth felt right. It felt right to be there, to sprawl hastily across his chaise and to watch a demon stumble more than saunter through his backroom, to be unable to draw his eyes away and just gape dreamily after him. That felt allowed. Right.

Yet, he had never been rewarded for believing anything - not in humans, nor in God, in Her Plan. Or in himself. He had been sentenced to execution for it, instead.

As far as Aziraphale was concerned he was done with Heaven already. And they didn’t seem likely to call him up any time soon either. He was left free, and would do good as he saw fit; he trust in himself to carry out Her Will, he would follow the Plan, and to Hell with Heaven’s ideas of war. He didn’t need the Archangels approval - he knew he had never had it to begin with - especially if their approval was this; if it would lead him to lose the Earth and its goodness, the humans that brought it, Crowley and his good-

But really, that was just it. It was they’re own side. If there was anything worth preserving, it was that. It was something he had thought and held in the back of his mind long ago, and something he should have admitted aloud just as long ago too. But it wasn’t just allegiances or arrangements, nor favors or even friendship. There were no words for it, but “theirs”. 

_Was this what Eve felt like?_ he wondered. He had always wondered. _Perhaps now I understand._

Aziraphale could admit, in the privacy of himself, alone in his backroom, that he would’ve gone to Alpha Centauri. That the concept of saving Earth would have been lost on him if it weren’t for Crowley to be on it. He had just believed; he did what he had always done, and chased down every thread. And upon receiving the Metatron’s answer, and if it weren’t for that portal and that well-meaning - that misguided - that foolish Sergeant Shadwell, he would’ve gone wherever the demon wanted.

_Perhaps I should have told him so?_ he mused. He buried his nose into the corner of the chaise, breathing deeply. The cushions smelled mostly of aged mothballs and only faintly of smoldering, and there was no way of knowing if that was leftover from the fire or from his infernal companion. He knew that if he had mentioned even a sliver of the truth when the demon confronted him, Crowley would have pressed at it until he relented, and then Earth would have been gone. So the angel had lied instead. 

He could only imagine how lecherous of a grin he would get if he admitted that now. It was quite embarrassing how naive he had been; that had to be what made his cheeks feel warm. Not the image of flashing teeth, or the whisper that would tease the Heavenly creature for lying. _But really, it seems it’s all worked out for the best._ Aziraphale supposed it didn’t matter. He and Crowley and humanity could go on as before, missing only the breath on his neck every time he produced a miracle that Heaven found impertinent, and being better for it. _What a world it can be, now._

If, only, that world had ever existed.

Meanwhile, gone unnoticed, the angel’s ceremonial candles had begun to spark, the wicks starting to glow red from where they were left in the main room. Thin trails of smoke wafted towards the vaulted ceilings. When Adam had restored the bookshop, he had restored them with it: it was too much to ask of a young boy, who didn’t know what happened, to have done anything else. They were situated next to several stacks of unorganized books on a table just left of center, halfway across the large ornate rug. Aziraphale could not smell the smoke or feel the most minuscule increase of temperature, not when they only reminded him of Crowley, and couldn’t see them where they flickered into a steady light.

He noticed, instead, that when he closed his eyes, a sigh escaping his chest, the room seemed to get brighter instead of dark. And when he opened them again, brighter still.

His feet were now on white tile, one he’d never dream to install in his bookshop, and that the cushions beneath him were gone. The room had gone stilted cold, and the warmth of his blush and the alcohol in his core were flush in the open air. The taste of sobriety sat on the back of his tongue. He reached for anything he could, hands grasping out, before neatly stumbling to his knees. There was a weight on his back that he could not see or place; he was disoriented, instead, by the bright glow around him when he lifted his head. It split painfully, like a hairline fracture, behind his eyes. Upon opening his eyes again, his vision starting to clear, he found looking back into his were that of a violent violet.

He was back in Heaven. Lord knew where Crowley could be if he was back here. 

“Welcome back, Aziraphale.” Gabriel had a grin in his voice, but his face was devoid of it. He was bent over so they were nearly nose to nose, but upon speaking, straightened up so that he towered over Aziraphale. The angel had to crane his neck to follow, and it sent little electric crackles down his shoulders. “It’s been such a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Has it?” Aziraphale tried to smile, but it turned into a grimace when he tried to stand and found his legs aching too much to hold his weight. He placed a hand down onto the floor to catch himself and felt his palms grow warm. Sweat was breaking out beneath his collar, even where the air could touch his neck from where his bowtie was missing. What was he even wearing now? It was pearly white cloth, blending into the floor.

“No,” Uriel said. She was nearly hidden behind Sandalphon, flanking Gabriel’s left while Michael hovered at his right, but her glower was stronger than the three of them combined, and behind her stood a whole host of angels. the empty corridors of Heaven were nearly filled wall to wall. Aziraphale could recognize most, but there were faces in the front he did not, those with younger, wider eyes watching on. 

“Not nearly long enough,” Sandalphon said. His mouth stretched into that slow, cracked grin, the gold on his teeth glittering daggers into Aziraphale’s eyes.

He was about to be made an example of. Crowley had said his execution trial had been empty; that it was barely a trial, just a “here’s some hellfire, now be a good angel and pop on in.” This one looked closer to how his had gone in Hell, but their faces had been more eager; certainly, there were some wild looks, some distant eyes, but those cherubs looked more nervous than anything. Aziraphale looked over his shoulder and finally recognized the weight on his back were his own wings, forcibly manifested and sagging greatly to the ground. They felt as if they were logged with water and he couldn’t raise them. Off in the distance, between his feathers, he could see the blue planet spinning just as it had been the last time he’d seen it.

They must have noticed the switch, figured it out somehow, and were ready to correct the mistake. An additional audience now that there would be no mistakes - to quell any rumors of a Hellfire-Walking Angel, of a Traitorous Angel, a Deserter Angel. It was foolish to ever think Heaven wouldn’t be watching him. And that meant Hell would know too, and Crowley would have been taken down to Hell. 

His hands shook, and he could only console himself that Michael was still here - maybe Hell still didn’t know. Maybe Crowley was fine. _Or she just let them keep the Holy Water._

“Ah,” Aziraphale said. His voice cracked; his mouth was dry, his throat burned. He brought his hands back into his chest, wringing his fingers together painfully, and resigned himself to kneeling. “Well, to what do I owe the pleasure-”

“Let’s cut to the chase, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said, clapping his hands together. The sound echoed off the walls as if it were completely empty. “We’ve been through this before. You committed treason against Heaven.” He made a gesture towards the audience gathered, the hundreds of eyes twinkling back at him. “You’re not an angel.” Then he smiled at the other archangels, and he laughed, and brought his hands back together again, calmly at his middle. “Alright, then, that went well. Let’s make it official, huh? Get rid of him.”

“Just hold on a minute.” The weight on his back was growing heavier, as if bricks were being tied to every single feather. His wings barely felt like a part of his body any longer; the muscles were growing numb and collapsing down onto his shoulders, and even as he spread them out across the floor, the weight only increased. He didn’t have a defense - he’d done what he’d done. But he still thought he’d done the right thing, and how could an angel be punished for doing what he believed was right? “We don’t know the Almighty’s real plan- it was the duty She gave me to protect the humans- how can you say that what I did was treason?” He just knew that he needed to leave here alive if Crowley had any chance. He could figure something out. “We cannot know-”

“What will it take to get you to shut up?” Gabriel asked.

“That’s very clever, Aziraphale,” Uriel said, motionless from head to toe and unblinking in her gaze. “But it doesn’t matter if Armageddon was not part of the Ineffable Plan. There are plenty of reasons that you deserve to Fall.”

“Fall?” Aziraphale asked. “That’s my sentence?” _Did they not figure out the switch? - does that mean Crowley is safe?_

“You know what is unquestionably treason?” Michael asked. A folder appeared in her hands and from it she produced a handful of photographs. She walked them close to Aziraphale, shoved them under his nose, and said, “Associating with a demon for - oh, I don’t know how long, let’s say at least several hundred years, hm?” They were pictures of him and Crowley; in St. James Park, on the bus, in front of his bookshop. “And, of course, working together with that demon to work against your fellow angels.” She now towered over him too; it reminded him of Satan bursting from the airbase pavement. She turns to hold them up for the audience of angels to see as well.

It was no longer a secret about he and Crowley, of course, what with the spectacle at where Armageddon was supposed to be, but it was striking that Michael had known for so long. Perhaps she had been the only one to know. Quickly, behind his eyes, the image of her all in white against the dim backdrop of the Hell courtroom flashed. _Did she show those to Hell?_

Michael turned back to him, flashing a smile that didn’t even reach her cheeks. “That sounds like enough, doesn’t it?”

“I suppose so,” Aziraphale said. She winked at him before turning away. Did they take him too?

“Do you confess, then?” Gabriel asked. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, but he knew it wouldn’t matter either way. If repentance would fix this, he wouldn’t already be feeling the heat creeping along the line of his back. “I confess.” And if repentance would involve denouncing or smiting Crowley, he knew he wouldn’t do that either. If the Almighty ordained this Herself, surely She knew that, and saw that the offer wasn’t even necessary.

“Confess to what?” Gabriel asked, cupping a hand to his ear. “Just for the record.”

There was no one in the room taking any sort of records. But he wavered, momentarily, nonetheless. If he mentioned Crowley, could that come back down to hurt him? If Crowley was in trial right now, would his confession float down to them and condemn him as well? “I confess to treason.” If Hell had taken Crowley, he wasn’t sure what they could throw at him. Demons can't fall twice. But it was best not to risk it.

Gabriel gave him a strained look. “Great. Great stuff." Sighed. "Whatever, he’s done, send him down.”

The heat was only just beginning to give way to an ache, but it began that his knees tingled where they met the floor. Uriel and Sandalphon advanced, each grabbing one arm and one wing, and hauling him up. They began to drag him before he could get to his feet, so he stayed limp, and watched as, behind him, Gabriel and Michael led the procession of lower angels in their wake. Feathers were falling from his wings in streams, and the angels eyed them cautiously and bounced around them and they began to smolder on the floor. 

His fear was slowly melting away. He just felt tired; exhaustion that even the burning of his ankles on Heaven’s tile could not chase away.

Uriel and Sandalphon stopped him in front of an elevator, and the door opened automatically with a click and a chime. The light was splintering across the angel’s head, burning behind his eyes, but he couldn’t bring himself to close them. He had never really enjoyed himself in Heaven, but this would be his last look of which, watching angels trip over bonfires being created by his feathers falling out. He would never have to return here. Looking down, he saw that he was in the robes he had worn when the Earth was created; the day he had first gone down to Eden.

The angels threw him onto the elevator and stood aside so the audience could watch the doors close. Sandalphon was grinning wildly now, only rivaled by his grin at Sodom and Gomorrah, and Gabriel gave him a nonchalant wave. He tried to hold himself up against the railings of the elevator to stay on his feet, but the instant the doors closed, the floors and walls fell away, and he with them, into an endless burning pit below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh wow look it only took me *checks watch* over two months to post an update. I've also already gone against my own word because the first quote I go for is Faust. 
> 
> This would have probably come out faster if I hadn't written a GOmens one-shot and nearly finished it before suddenly decided to not finish that either, but alas, this is how I am. I also just had trouble bringing myself to write this because I realized how heavy it was going to be and when I started this fic I had forgotten that to get to the fun part I have to actually do some emotional lifting first. But here it is! I have no idea when the next chapter may come, as I'm only on break for another week, but maybe I'll finish that one-shot, so at least there may be that even if it takes me another two months to get to this fic again.
> 
> Thanks so much if you read the first chapter when it came out and have waited around this long for it! You should come follow me on Twitter (@aloneontheark) if you want more GOmens mutuals, and feel free to send me a message if you want to chat! I have literally zero friends who like good omens so I'm lonely as fuck over there. You can also do the same on Tumblr, also @ aloneontheark (the only thing I have there right now is a fic link but I'm going to start using it more I swear, still feel free to interact with me there.)


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